


when rainy skies part

by tkreyesevandiaz



Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Anxiety, Anxious Evan "Buck" Buckley, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hugs, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nightmares, Pre-Relationship Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz, Tumblr Prompt, Worried Eddie Diaz
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-29
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:07:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27774280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tkreyesevandiaz/pseuds/tkreyesevandiaz
Summary: A familiar nightmare comes back to haunt Buck, and Eddie makes sure he knows that he's never alone.56. "Tell me what's wrong."
Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley & Christopher Diaz & Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV), Evan "Buck" Buckley & Eddie Diaz, Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz
Comments: 36
Kudos: 219





	when rainy skies part

**Author's Note:**

  * For [from_nova](https://archiveofourown.org/users/from_nova/gifts).



> Nova <3
> 
> **56\. "Tell me what's wrong."**
> 
> I hope you like this, love <3
> 
> TW: nightmares, anxious descriptions, restlessness, tsunami talk.

He’s not sure what wakes him up.

There are flashes racing through his mind of crashing waves, unyielding water, a little boy ripped from his grasp. He sees bodies float past his eyelids, sees a mirage of himself collapsing, all of these memories blurring away to meet a familiar man with honey-brown eyes and a kind smile, holding a child with golden curls and a toothy grin. He tries to hold onto the last image, but it leaves him just as the others did, disintegrating like cobwebs in his mind’s grasp.

It’s not until he lays awake, panting like he just ran a marathon, sweat sticking to him like a second skin, that he recognizes the hoarseness in his throat, the phantom taste of salt and dirt, and realizes what’s happened. 

Another nightmare.

It’s been a while since Buck’s had this particular nightmare, and it’s usually never during one of his post-shift naps like it was today. He’s not quite sure what triggered it, but as he tilts his head to look at the clock, Buck realizes it’s raining outside.

The pound of the rain against the glass shouldn’t sound so similar to the crash of waves, but right now, it  _ does _ .

With trembling hands, Buck reaches for the earphones he keeps close, slipping them on and tapping on a random playlist — anything to get the remnants of the horrid nightmare out of his mind.

As random words and rhythms fill his ears, Buck closes his eyes and lets himself sink into the mattress. The fear that had shocked him awake seeps out of his fingertips, leaving blazing trails on the duvet for the next time he lies here, but he doesn’t care about that right now. 

Right now, all he wants is for all of it to go away.

It takes what feels like hours to get his heart rate under control, but Buck manages it, swinging himself off the bed to avoid looking at where he can see the imprint of his screams. Padding softly down the stairs, he glances at the window and decides to take one earphone out to let his mind finally differentiate between rain and tsunamis.

There’s a shifty energy under his skin that urges him to do  _ something  _ without actually defining what that something is. His restlessness only sets him on edge even more. His throat still feels raw and ripped to shreds, so he puts on a kettle, staring outside the kitchen window.

There had been a time where rain used to symbolize fresh beginnings, spring, flowers...all the little things that came with all the poetry that’s ever been printed about this particular weather. And even now, Buck has to admit that there’s a certain beauty to being lost among overcast clouds, shielded from the too-bright glare of the sun.

But today, that beauty seems to have evaporated with each passing drop against his balcony ledge.

Buck knows for a fact that it’s his shift that tipped him off — they had some close calls today, including an emergency involving yet another backyard pool, and he’d come home strung tight for it.

He shouldn’t have fallen asleep.

Before he can ponder on that fact, he hears the faint click of a key, followed closely by Christopher and Eddie’s laughter.

_ Fuck. _

He’s barely put the strewn pieces of himself back together when the door swings open behind him, and in a last ditch effort to keep the struggle off his face where he knows Eddie would read it instantly, Buck keeps his back to the door, head dropping as he curses himself under his breath.

How did he forget that the Diaz boys were supposed to come over tonight? How did he let that slip from his mind?

“Hi Buck!” Christopher’s voice rings merrily past the drear of his apartment, spreading the same sunshine that Buck feels he doesn’t deserve in times like this.

“Hey, buddy.” As soon as the words come out, Buck winces, knowing they sound mangled. “How was school today?”

He still hasn’t looked at them yet, focusing his hands on pouring hot water into a mug of honey instead, but he can feel the weight of Eddie’s gaze settle in the dip of his shoulder blades. It unsettles him to be heard so loudly by someone who hasn’t even seen his face, but at the same token, he remembers that it was that face that swept the rest of the horrible images from his mind.

Having stirred his mug well into dissolving the honey, Buck exhales quietly before pasting on a smile and turning to face Christopher, who’s lost in a story of math quizzes and some marathon they have in who can flip the paper over the fastest.

He still avoids looking at Eddie too closely, but can feel the other man assess him, even as he drops nods and laughs in the right places.

Buck hates that he’s made his friend worry, and he hates that he can’t give Christopher his full attention when he gets like this, and combined, those two things only add another layer of frustration with himself to the ones he woke up with.

Eventually, Christopher runs out of stories to tell, and instead smiles up at Buck sweetly before giving him his usual hug as Buck rounds the table. He resists the urge to look away from the brightness of the boy in his arms, even as he brings a hand up to cradle the back of his head. 

His arms still scream with the feeling of this very same child being ripped away from him, and Buck has to hold back yet another urge to tighten his grip on Christopher.

It’s not until the kid walks away, singing quietly to himself, that Eddie speaks, content to have been blending in the background while his son was speaking.

“What’s going on?” Eddie asks, the concern heavy in his voice. Buck looks at him for a moment, cocking his head as he drinks in the familiar features of his best friend.

There’s a reason that it’s this particular man who pulls him out from most of his spirals, who keeps him anchored to Earth with a few carefully-chosen words. It's Eddie, the person who steps out of his own comfort zone to give people what they need even if they themselves don’t know they need it.

Buck knows this firsthand. He remembers the pointed words Eddie had leveraged his way months ago, while he was spilling Red’s story to the rest of the team. He'd managed to get the words out — that he feared being left behind, but it hadn’t escaped his notice that no one else could give him any reassurance outside of knee-jerk platitudes. Eddie’s words were the only words that had held any weight to stop his mind from racing too far ahead.

“Buck?”

“Hmm?” 

Eddie steps closer to him, studying him quietly. “What’s wrong?”

He thinks about lying; he really does. Somehow, he can’t make himself  _ actually  _ do it. Eddie would see right through him.

Blessedly, he doesn’t have to say anything. Eddie seems to have taken his silence as a loud sign that he doesn’t want to talk — another perceptive skill in a long list of them. Instead, he settles a hand on Buck’s shoulder, steering him towards the couch in a clear indication that he’s not going to make him talk before he’s ready.

“Wait, let me get you something to drink,” he says, almost slipping out of Eddie’s grasp before he’s turned around yet again.

“I can grab it. Go sit with Chris, I’ll grab dinner,” Eddie says with a kind smile, squeezing his shoulder. His thumb nestles itself in the same groove it had the morning after the tsunami, just as reassuring and grounding now as it was then.

Buck gives him a weak smile, trying to push away the feeling of inadequacy of not even being able to offer his guests a drink as they come in. He turns and stands there for a while, watching Eddie hum to himself as he moves comfortably around Buck’s kitchen, and thinks that the other side of the equation is also true — the Diaz boys aren’t guests here, either.

Before he can get too ahead of himself, he ignores Eddie’s protests and immerses himself into plating the pizza onto the paper plates his best friend reluctantly slides his way. Picking up Christopher’s plate, Buck meanders over to where Christopher has already turned the TV on.

“Here you go, bud.” He presents the plate with as much flourish as he can muster, which admittedly is not a lot, but it makes Chris giggle and smile, so he’ll take it.

Eddie slides his mug over to him from where he’d picked the abandoned cup of, and Buck leverages a grateful smile his way. He isn’t sure he can stomach eating anything right now, and he’s thankful when no one seems to push him.

“What are we picking for our movie today?” Eddie asks, stretching forward to grab napkins. Buck sits against one arm of the couch, his hot mug wrapped up by cold fingers, watching them quietly.

Christopher picks one of the new releases on Disney Plus, and settles in comfortably. Eddie looks just as comfortable where he’s pulled his feet up on the couch, shoes sitting aside.

As technicolor images play across the screen, Buck stares blankly outside the window above the TV, tracing droplets of water as they disappear into the ledge, each drop highlighted by the city's lights, against the inky black of night.

It was funny; the day of the tsunami had been bright, colorful,  _ happy.  _ There had been no dreary weather, no ominous clouds, no thunder, no lightning strikes, no warning  _ at all _ . Just a few choice words from Christopher had been the only premonition Buck was given.

_ “Where did all the water go?” _

Those words echoed in his mind, because not even two minutes later, there had been nothing  _ but  _ water. And even now,  _ months  _ after the tsunami, Buck still finds himself sitting in a fire truck at the pier, right outside the submerged diner. He can still feel the relief of having Chris back in his arms, can still feel the burn of salt and God knows what else in the cuts around his eye.

“Buck?” He jerks, realizing that at some point, his fingers had come up to brush against the faint white lines on his face. Eddie’s sitting cross-legged facing him, and Buck had been lost in his thoughts to the point where he hadn’t even noticed Christopher get up and leave. 

“Where’s Chris?”

“Bathroom,” Eddie replies shortly. “Is it okay if we stay tonight?”

Buck isn’t stupid; he knows that Eddie wants to stay because he’s worried, not because he doesn’t trust him, or because it's late, or for any other bullshit reason his mind’s pushing at him to make. He also knows that the minute Christopher knocks out, there’s going to be a conversation waiting for him, and if not tonight, then tomorrow morning.

Still, he can’t bring himself to say anything outright. There’s too much gloom permeating his loft right now, too much evidence of the splinters of Buck’s heart embedded into the walls grotesquely, clear for everyone to read. He doesn’t want Eddie and Chris to be privy to that.

“Please?” Eddie says softly, and Buck just stares, because while the look of concern is certainly not new, the insistence is.

Maybe he really isn't as good at hiding things as he thinks he is. Or maybe it's just because it's Eddie.

The conversation drops as Christopher comes out with grease-free hands, immediately curling into Buck’s side. Buck wraps one arm around him as Eddie presses play again. 

It’s not long before his mind begins to wander again. This time, it’s stuck on the father from today’s call, who had to be held back by Lewis and Buck so the rest of the crew could focus on bringing the boy back.

Buck’s heart had been in his throat during the entire rescue, even as he kept an iron-clad grip on the dad. The look on the father’s face when his son jerked up to cough up water, signaling that he was going to be okay, hit Buck harder than anything else.

Because that had been the look on his face, too. 

In the span of 5 minutes at the makeshift triage center, Buck had gone through every single emotion in the book: horror at seeing Eddie there, panic at not knowing what to do, resolution for having to tell Eddie, fear that Eddie would blame him more than he blamed himself, joy that they got Christopher back. And then, the last of his tethers had ripped free, sending him crashing down.

But Eddie  _ hadn’t _ .

It was the part that Buck, even after all these months, couldn’t make any sense of. Why didn’t Eddie blame him? Why  _ couldn’t  _ he blame him? Buck had very nearly lost the most precious thing in the world to him, the sole reason Eddie kept himself going day after day. And yet, Eddie had stood right in Buck’s apartment, proclaimed that he didn’t trust anyone else with his son more than Buck, and showed it by leaving Christopher with him again.

Part of him thought that it would’ve been easier if Eddie had yelled at him, or punched him, or did anything but entrust Christopher with him again.

But the rational part of him knows that Eddie doesn’t do anything he doesn’t mean. He’s an honest man, and if he thought for a second that Buck was a danger to his kid, he wouldn’t have let him within ten feet of Christopher. Instead, he keeps coming over, keeps leaving Buck and Chris to their own devices when they can swing it.

It’s this rationalization that has him saying, “yes.”

“Hmm?” Eddie looks his way with a confused expression, so Buck clears his throat and says the word more clearly. The smile that overtakes his expression reminds him of the one he’d woken up to, and Buck has to look away before he starts crying.

They get through almost the whole movie before Christopher falls asleep, head lolling against Buck’s chest. Buck stares down at the boy, carding gentle fingers through unruly curls. The rhythmic motion takes a few degrees of tension out of his muscles, finally letting him relax into the couch.

“You know,” Eddie starts quietly, “Christopher wouldn’t have fallen asleep on you if he didn’t trust you. And I wouldn't have let him if I didn't trust you.”

And Buck’s heart stops. 

Eddie pinpointed the entire root of Buck’s disorientation with a few choice words that leave him conflicted between relief for being heard when he can’t make himself form the words, and panic for being so vulnerable. 

“It doesn’t make sense to me,” Buck answers, not looking at him. “At least, not right now.”

“Here, lay him down here. We can talk over there,” Eddie says, standing up and grabbing the few dirty dishes littered around the coffee table. Buck gently settles Christopher down, slipping out from under him without jostling him.

He’s not looking forward to this conversation. He doesn’t want Eddie to know how much he still struggles with the tsunami, especially given that the man’s son was in it. And after what happened that day, Buck doesn’t feel like he has the right to complain about the trauma.

“Wherever your mind’s going, stop it right now.” Eddie leans back against the counter. “What’s going on, Buck? You don’t look so hot, you didn’t eat anything, and you’ve been spaced out all evening.”

“I know, I’m sorry–”

Eddie cuts him off before he can finish. “No, don’t be sorry. It’s okay to have bad days. That’s not what this is about. I just want you to **tell me what's wrong**.”

A couple of months after the lawsuit, he and Eddie had decided on working towards communicating with one another better. They were partners; they had to be at their A-game, or people could get hurt. It just so happened that some of the partnership that made them so good at what they did came from this ambiguity of their relationship, where the lines blur enough that Buck rarely has a title for what Eddie really is to him.

“It’s the tsunami,” Buck confesses, fiddling with his fingers. “We had a call today...and it went well, thank God, but it hit me a little too close. And when I fell asleep after my shift…”

“It all came back,” Eddie completed, stepping closer to him. “I didn’t know you were still having nightmares about that.”

“Because I’m not. Not always. Maybe once every few weeks or so, but not like this.”

Truthful seems to be the only way to go, so Buck sticks with it, marveling at how Eddie’s shoulders drop a little with each genuine answer he gives.

"I'm still afraid that one day you'll wake up and realize...that the guy who was supposed to be your best friend lost the most important thing in the world to you," Buck rambles, spelling each and every insecurity he has in bold-type, and with each sentence, the struck look on Eddie's face only makes his heart hurt.

"Buck, I will _never_ blame you for the tsunami. Because whether Christopher was with you or not, I know for a fact that you wouldn't have put him down until I had him back, and you _didn't._ You were on your feet with that IV drip, looking like hell had raked you over a bed of coals, but I would've bet on my life that if you hadn't run into me there, you would've been right back out on those streets.

"Yeah, I was shocked, and in the moment you told me, my world fell away because without him, I don't know who I am anymore. And I don't want to know, because that kid makes my world a better place just by existing, makes me a better man without even trying." 

Buck stares wide-eyed as Eddie says this. The inadequacy hasn't mysteriously disappeared with the words, but the jagged edges don't prick him anymore, and for that, he has to be grateful.

"I don't know what I would've done if he was taken away from me."

Instead of saying anything else, Eddie hugs him.

It’s here, in the circle of Eddie’s arms, that Buck thinks about how well his partner knows him. Like magic, Eddie’s warmth seeps through his skin and coaxes the restless energy out of him, leaving him nearly boneless against Eddie’s body.

He ponders upon this particular hug as they stand here. Eddie’s arms stretch all the way across his torso, one palm curving just around his shoulder and the other settled on his waist firmly. He can feel the weight of Eddie’s forearms anchoring his spine to the floor wherever he's touching and it settles Buck on solid ground.

Buck exhales, ducking his head and pressing his cheek into Eddie’s shoulder. This is his favourite place to be when he gets like this. He is, by no means, a small man, but standing here completely enclosed by Eddie, Buck feels like he isn’t too much.

He feels safe.

The cradle of Eddie’s shoulder forms a perfect space for his ear and cheek to rest, their temples pressing together as Eddie shifts closer. Buck lifts his arms and wraps them around him wherever he can reach.

They stand like that for an eternity, letting the city race past them as time slows.

“You’re not alone,” Eddie whispers quietly, seemingly shifting closer. "And Chris and I are never going to leave you. I promise." 

Buck believes him.

Hot tears burn at the back of his eyes but he somehow manages to hold them back from falling. Instead, he inhales Eddie’s familiar scent, letting it wash through him until Buck feels like he’s nothing but Eddie’s affection, carefully welded back in place with Eddie's love.

He breathes out again, tightening his grip on the other man, who reciprocates in kind.

"Thank you."

When Buck looks up again, the rain has stopped. 

And he will be okay.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry guys, Chris didn't have too big of a role here!
> 
> Kudos and Comments make my day, so thank you to everyone who leaves them! I love hearing what you guys think, and anyone who takes time out of their day to comment has my heart and soul ♥
> 
> You can find me on Tumblr at [zeethebooknerd](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/zeethebooknerd) or on Twitter at [tkreyesevandiaz](https://twitter.com/tkreyesevandiaz).


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